The Project
The project "Human populations and paleoclimatic evolution in West Africa" was created in 1997 following the discovery of the Ounjougou site complex in the Dogon Country (see Research History section). In addition to an important archaeological sequence, this site complex is set apart by a series of layers rich in remarkably well-preserved organic remains. This offers the opportunity in West Africa to address – in the same context – relationships between human occupations and climatic and environmental variability over a long chronological range. In order to best exploit this immense potential, an international research program was launched by the Swiss Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Mission in West Africa (MAESAO), in the Department of Anthropology and Ecology at the University of Geneva. An interdisciplinary approach was then developed to examine human-environment relationship in the Dogon Country, from the Pleistocene to the present. Research in the fields of archaeology, paleometallurgy, geomorphology, sedimentology, archaeobotany, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology, ethnology and linguistics was thus undertaken from the beginning of the project. Altogether this research has an impact that goes beyond a purely regional framework. From a geographic point of view, fieldwork in recent years has moved on from the Ounjougou area to the surrounding area of the Cliff of Bandiagara and the Seno-Gondo Plain in order to acquire a global perception of the settlement phenomena in the Dogon Country.
At present, researchers and students from 13 institutions in four countries (Switzerland, Mali, France and Germany) work in strict collaboration within the project, both in the field and in the laboratory (see Teams and Laboratories section). Since 1997, the program has received four successive grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, ensuring the continuance of research to the present (see Financing section).
The Dogon Country has been registered in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1989; concurrently with fieldwork, the Cultural Mission of Bandiagara is engaged in a program of increasing awareness and diffusion of information within the communities affected by the different research projects. The Cultural Mission also evaluates the impact that the project may have on local populations and the perception of their own cultural and historical heritage (see Cultural Heritage section). Finally, the project plays a non-negligible role in training in Mali, since several students from the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Bamako participate each year in the research.
